Over the years, there have always been a few pieces of pottery by Steve Tubbs in his store, Ben’s Floral & Frame Designs, and even his dad’s store, Ben Franklin.

But it wasn’t until Tubbs welcomed his daughter-in-law, a graphic designer, into the family that he got a logo for his work and decided to designate a corner of his store to his pottery alone.

Tubbs took his first pottery class, taught by Peter Flick, in the fall of his senior year at Albert Lea High School.

“It came easy, and it was exciting,” Tubbs recalled.

“I got the results I liked faster. I’d taken enough painting classes to know I should stick with clay,” he added.

After high school, he took more classes at Austin Community College from Jim Wegner, then got his own potter’s wheel and kiln.

When he transferred to the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, his counselor outlined his business courses.

“Then I asked, ‘But when do I get to take my pottery classes?’ and she must have seen the distraught look on my face, because she left, and came back and said she had just the thing for me,” Tubbs said.

Tubbs ended up earning a bachelor’s degree in individualized studies, which amounted to a two-thirds business degree and one-thirds ceramics degree. His instructors were Curtis Hoard and Warren Mackenzie.

In college, pottery was his part-time job. He and Debbie had married two years out of high school and she worked full time as a legal secretary. He’d do his school work and make pottery, then come home to Albert Lea on the weekends to fire what he’d made.

When he graduated from college, he and Debbie moved back to Albert Lea and he joined his dad in the business, as did Debbie. While owning a business didn’t always leave a lot of time for his pottery, he’d squeeze it in where he could.

He’s made the mugs for the Big Island Rendezvous and Festival since 1987.

“I’ve made as few as 100 and as many as 400,” Tubbs said. “That comes to 5,000 mugs over the years. I’ve really gotten good at mugs.”

Tubbs said in the past year, he’s made an effort to produce more pieces.

In addition to the mugs, he makes wine chillers and vases, bowls, pie plates, serving dishes, candle holders, spoon rests, berry colanders and chip and dip servers.

While he can make items that people request, the colors and shapes are his, he said.

“Sometimes people say, ‘Well, that’s not perfect,’ and I say, ‘Thank you,’” Tubbs said. “It’s good to get the technical aspects down, but I put my artistic qualities into it. It’s the character in the pot that makes it interesting and personal.”

Even though Tubbs has been creating pottery for 30 years, he still gets excited when he opens his kiln.

“There’s a certain amount of unpredictability with glaze,” he said, adding he’s learned that he needs to be patient when it comes to opening the kiln.

If opened too soon, the pottery can break.

He buys his clay and he buys his glazes. “It’s how you apply the glazes and what you do with them that makes things interesting. I use a mixture of two or three glazes,” he said. He sticks to greens, browns and blues.

He uses a process called cone 8 oxidation.

In some of his shallow bowls, he arranges clear and colored broken glass before firing them.

“At 2300 degrees, it meals, then it crackles when it cools,” Tubbs said of the effect. “It’s a 30-hour cool on the process.”

At a holiday open house at Ben’s Floral & Frame Designs, Tubbs spent two days throwing pots on his wheel. “I had more people say, ‘I didn’t know you did that.’ It’s been kinda fun.”

Now, he said, people know they’re buying more than a piece of pottery. “They have a face to go with the work,” he said. “They’re buying a personality. Not just a piece.”

Tubbs said he’s always known what he wants to do when he retires, and admits that day is not yet in sight. Being a full-time artist has its own set of struggles, and he enjoys having the store, he said.

“Pottery is something a person can enjoy all your life,” he said. “There are always things to learn, even when you think you’ve learned it all.”